Savannah studies fair housing conditions

Your home provides much more than shelter from inclement weather. Where you live can have a profound effect on the education your children receive as well as the employment opportunities available to them later in life. For these reasons, and many others, housing discrimination has a deep and lasting impact on its victims.
For the past 50 years, the Fair Housing Act has prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the agency charged with enforcing fair housing laws.
Every five years, HUD requires U.S. cities to perform an Assessment of Fair Housing to ensure that laws designed to protect minority interests are being actively enforced. Last month, the City of Savannah hired Mosaic Community Planning, an Atlanta-based consulting firm, to conduct a series of interviews with residents living in Savannah’s minority communities.
Mosaic was hired to prepare the City’s Assessment of Fair Housing, and as part of that process conducted a series of community outreach activities, including public workshops, interviews, focus groups and an online survey; Interviews and focus groups were scheduled with a broad range of stakeholders, including faith-based coalitions, mortgage bankers, realtors, developers, non-profit housing providers, non-profit service providers (legal services, people with disabilities, homeless, etc.), low income neighborhoods, minority communities, and city and regional planning staff.
Patty McIntosh works for the City of Savannah’s Community Planning and Development Department. She said the study was a requirement for Savannah to maintain eligibility for Community Development Block Grants and other federal housing funds.
“Our assessment involves research into such issues as patterns of segregation, concentrated areas of poverty, and disparities in access to opportunity,” McIntosh said. “Based on the findings, this assessment will propose strategies to overcome any identified fair housing barriers.”
Forum participants included Mosaic principal partner, Melissa Mailloux, and several people connected to Savannah’s Hispanic communities: Maria Ramo-Hibbs, Director for the Office of Family Life at the Catholic Diocese of Savannah; Rebecca Lehto, Administrative Assistant for Catholic Charities of South Georgia; Samuel Rodriguez, Pastor of the First Hispanic Baptist Church of Savannah; and John Newton, editor of La Voz Latina, a monthly newspaper serving Savannah and surrounding communities.
Group participants told Mailloux that racial segregation did exist in Savannah’s Hispanic neighborhoods but agreed that problem was primarily due to economic factors and a desire to live near people who shared a common language and culture.
“Crime is a big problem for many people living in these neighborhoods,” said one participant. “Criminals come into these neighborhoods and assault people and steal their money but people cannot move out because they can’t afford to pay higher rent somewhere else.”
Another participant said a lack of knowledge about tenant rights and the legal status of some residents played a role in the way they were treated by landlords.
“People who are undocumented are afraid to complain to the landlord when there is a problem,” one commented. “The landlord knows they won’t take their complaints to legal authorities so he ignores them or tells them to fix it themselves or to move out if they don’t like it.”
Transportation was identified as another big problem for Hispanic residents living in areas that do not receive bus service from the Chatham Area Transit Authority. John Newton noted that hundreds of Hispanic families live in unincorporated areas and municipalities adjacent to Savannah where political leaders have vowed to fight against bringing bus service to these residents.
“Chatham County Commissioner, Dean Kicklighter, who represents residents in Garden City and the Westside, told me he would never support bus service to the trailer parks along Dean Forest Road because the people who elect him to office do not ride buses and they don’t want their taxes to pay for a service they don’t use,” Newton said.
Mailloux noted that Savannah officials have no jurisdiction over policy decisions made by the county’s other municipalities.
Participants agreed that many Hispanics living in Savannah were not aware of fair housing laws or the basic rights that exist to protect all residents regardless of legal status. The group also agreed the City of Savannah needs to become more proactive in educating Hispanic residents about their rights and should be willing to provide materials in Spanish to assist them.
Wayne Dawson is the Executive Director of the Savannah Fair Housing Council, a local non-profit
Working to eliminate housing discrimination through education and enforcement programs.
“We understand the problems the language barrier presents to our Hispanic residents,” Dawson said. “In 2010, the City of Savannah financed a fair housing study that called for additional funding for counseling services explicitly targeted toward Hispanic residents living in poverty. But that funding never materialized. I am cautiously optimistic the new process will be more successful than previous efforts.”
In strong language, the 2010 study outlined several actions the city should undertake to educate Hispanic residents on their rights as tenants: “Issues of poverty and the inability of the least expensive housing to meet minimum standards of adequacy and safety are compounded for some Hispanic residents by the willingness of unscrupulous operators to take advantage of cultural unfamiliarity and language limitations to glean excess profits from a group whose capacities to defend themselves are limited. Quasi-legal advice, basic translations of contracts and explanations of rights and responsibilities of parties to particular leases, purchase agreements and options should be provided to the poorest immigrant communities to reduce the levels of illegal exploitation.”
Melissa Mailloux said results from the latest Assessment of Fair Housing study should be available for public review early next year.
For more information about the Savannah Fair Housing Council, please contact Wayne Dawson at 912-651-3636 or write to wayne@savannahfairhousing.org. For access to fair housing documents in Spanish, please visit www.fairhousingresourcecenter.wordpress.com/print-psas/